Digitized  by  tine  Internet  Arcliive 

in  2007  witli  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


littp://www.arcliive.org/details/capncliadwickmarbOOcliadiala 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

MARBLEHEAD    SKIPPER 
AND     SHOEMAKER 


'TRUE    AMERICAN    TYPES" 


Vol.1.  JOHN  GILLEY:  Maine  Farmer  and 
Fisherman,  by  Charles  W.  Eliot. 

Vol.  II.  AUGUSTUS  CONANT  :  Illinois 
Pioneer  and  Preacher,  by  Robert  Coll- 

YER. 

Vol.  III.  CAP'N  CHADWICK:  Marble- 
head  Skipper  and  Shoemaker,  by  John 
W.  Chadwick. 


Price,  each,  60  cents,  net ;  by  mail,  65  cents. 


AMERICAN  UNITARIAN  ASSOCIATION 
Publishers,  Boston,  Massachusetts 


CAP  N  CHADWICK 

MARBLEHEAD  SKIPPER 
AND     SHOEMAKER 


BY 

JOHN   WHITE  CHADWICK 


BOSTON 

AMERICAN   UNITARIAN  ASSOCIATION 

1906 


Copyright  1906 
American  Unitarian  Association 


Published  October,  1906 


THE  UNIVERSITY   PRESS 
CAMBRIDGE,     U.S.A. 


CAP^N    CHADWICK 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

CAPTAIN  CHADWICK  was 
born  Nov.  i8,  1809,  truly  a 
year  of  grace,  seeing  that  it  was  the 
birth  year  of  Lincoln  and  Darwin, 
Tennyson,  Holmes,  and  Gladstone. 
My  father  had  no  public  reputation 
whatsoever,  but  I  dare  believe  he 
was  as  good  as  even  the  best  of  these. 
He  was  born  in  Marblehead,  Mass., 
in  the  house  which  sets  back  from 
the  street,  opposite  the  Unitarian 
meeting-house.  The  old  meeting- 
house was  standing  then.  It  gave 
place  to  the  new  one  in  1832,  the 
first  year  of  my  father's  skippership, 
and,  if  he  was  not  the  youngest  of 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

the  contributors  to  the  building  fund, 
he  outlived  all  the  others.  His 
father,  Charles  Chadwick,  was  born 
in  1774  to  Benjamin  Chadwick  and 
Joanna  Coombs.  There  was  con- 
siderable intermarriage  between  the 
Coombs  family  and  the  Whites  and 
Haskells,  from  whom  my  father  drew 
his  lineage  on  his  mother's  side ;  and 
it  so  happened  that  her  grandmother, 
Ruth  Coombs,  was  a  half-sister  to 
Joanna  Coombs,  her  husband's 
mother.  "Aunt  Smith,"  Mary 
Coombs  Smith  (1770-1860),  the 
sister  of  my  grandfather,  Charles 
Chadwick,  outlived  her  brother  forty- 
five  years ;  and  she  was  a  great 
authority  on  the  Coombs  branch  of 
the  family,  at  once  proud  of  its  aris- 
tocracy and  ashamed  of  certain  blots 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

upon  the  scutcheon ;  for  Michael 
Coombs,  her  uncle,  had  been  a  Tory 
in  the  Revolutionary  War,  had  fled 
the  town,  and  his  property  had  been 
confiscated.  This  to  Aunt  Smith 
was  terrible  as  the  sin  against  the 
Holy  Ghost,  so  ardent  was  her  pa- 
triotic zeal.  She  was  never  able  to 
do  any  political  thinking  except  in 
the  terms  of  Revolutionary  politics. 
Republicans  and  Democrats  she  knew 
not,  but  demanded,  "  Which  are  the 
Whigs  and  which  are  the  Tories?" 
as  the  rival  processions  went  by  with 
their  flambeaux  in  1856.  There  are 
so  many  of  the  Smiths  that  her  fre- 
quent boast  "  Five  good  sea-captains 
in  that  one  family  !  "  was  not  extrava- 
gant. In  an  upper  chamber  of  her 
house,  which  stood  close  by  the  sea 
3 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

at  Swampscott,  she  had  in  various 
drawers  and  cabinets  a  great  many 
things  her  husband  and  her  son  had 
brought  home  from  the  East  Indies, 
—  woods  and  spices,  fabrics  as  rare 
as  Desdemona's  handkerchief,  —  and 
she  told  them  over  as  reverently  as  a 
nun  her  beads,  intoxicating  a  boy's 
imagination  with  the  mysterious  scent 
her  trophies  breathed,  and  with  the 
strangeness  of  her  tale.  There  were 
in  her  companionship  elements  of  a 
liberal  education  which  the  colleges 
do  not  possess. 

My  father's  maternal  grandparents 
were  John  White  (i 756-1 833)  and 
Ruth  Haskell  (1757-1808).  It  was 
a  nice  way  they  had  of  calling  the 
family  patriarch  "  Sir ; "  and  "  Sir 
White  "  always  had  for  me  a  pleasant 
4 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

old-world  sound,  and  invested  my 
ancestor,  who  was  so  called,  with  a 
peculiar  dignity,  as  if  he  "  drew  his 
blood  from  men  of  royal  siege."  In 
fact,  he  was  a  man  of  modest  force 
and  humble  occupations.  He  was  a 
Revolutionary  pensioner,  and  when 
a  little  boy  my  father  sometimes 
walked  to  Salem  with  him  to  draw 
his  pension.  Sir  White  had  tales  to 
tell :  he  had  seen  Washington  so 
many  times  in  Cambridge,  crossing 
the  Delaware  and  in  the  affair  at 
Trenton  and  Princeton,  and  in  the 
bitter  days  at  Valley  Forge.  In  def- 
erence to  the  safety  of  Washington, 
so  necessary  to  the  remainder  of  his 
personal  history,  I  have  conceded  the 
doubtfulness  of  the  family  tradition 
that  Sir  White  crossed  the  Delaware 
S 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

in  the  same  boat  with  him,  and  it  be- 
hooves many  others  to  be  as  self- 
denying  as  I  am.  In  1777  ^^  ^^^ 
discharged,  and  walked  all  the  way 
home  from  Pennsylvania,  falling  sick 
upon  the  way,  and  being  carefully 
tended  by  the  good  Samaritans  into 
whose  hands  he  fell.  Later  in  the 
war  he  was  a  privateersman  on  the 
"Tyrannicide,"  but  before  the  war 
was  over  he  was  married  to  Ruth 
Haskell  (Oct.  i,  1780),  and  the 
following  September,  on  the  first  day 
of  the  month  their  first  child,  Ruth, 
my  beloved  grandmother,  was  born. 
Good  trees  must  Sir  White  and 
Ruth  his  wife  have  been,  judged 
by  their  fruit.  And  it  was  plenti- 
ful. After  Ruth  came  Philip,  Mary, 
John,  Remember,  Susannah,  Jane, 
6 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

Ambrose.  Three  of  these,  Mary, 
Jane,  and  Susannah,  lived  for  me 
only  as  Polly,  Jinny,  and  Sukey,  in 
my  grandmother's  memory  and  twi- 
light talk,  two  of  them  having  died 
in  childhood,  and  Susannah  when 
she  was  only  twenty-five  years  old, 
leaving  an  infant  son,  John  Peach, 
for  my  grandmother  to  bring  up, 
she  being  then  (1819)  a  widow  with 
six  small  children  of  her  own,  and 
her  youngest  brother  in  her  care. 
Susannah  and  Remember,  whom 
we  always  called  "Aunt  Member," 
married  Frenchmen,  who  were,  I 
imagine,  refugees  who  had  no  taste 
for  the  Napoleonic  wars. 

My    father's    uncles,    John    and 
Philip    White,    were    men    of   great 
physical  energy  and  endurance,  and 
7 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

of  large  experience  as  fishermen  and 
master  mariners.  I  had  a  standing 
difference  with  my  father  as  to  their 
relative  merits,  my  father  inclining 
to  Uncle  Philip's  superiority,  and 
I  to  Uncle  John's.  The  fact  was 
that  Uncle  John  was  one  of  the 
most  ardent  lovers  of  children  I 
have  ever  known,  and  he  let  them 
know  how  much  he  thought  of 
them.  He  was  always  doing  them 
some  kindness  or  showing  them 
some  pleasing  attention,  and  he  was 
very  confidential  with  them  about 
his  own  sad  losses,  which  had, 
indeed,  been  many.  He  was  a 
goodly  sight  at  any  time,  so  kindly 
was  his  face  and  so  beautifully 
bronzed,  contrasting  with  his  snowy 
hair,  and  on  Sundays  with  his  broad 
8 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

white  neckcloth  semi-Directoire, 
which  was  his  daughter's  special 
pride.  He  was,  of  course,  a  pri- 
vateersman  in  the  War  of  1812, 
and  was  captured,  as  nearly  all  the 
brave  adventurers  from  Marblehead 
must  have  been,  seeing  that  five 
hundred  of  them  were  in  Dartmoor 
Prison  at  the  end  of  the  war,  and 
many  in  other  prisons  in  England 
and  in   Halifax. 

With  Uncle  Philip  I  had  none 
of  the  delights  I  had  with  Uncle 
John.  He  had  domestic  ties,  while 
Uncle  John,  wifeless  for  many  years, 
went  "  wandering  on  from  home  to 
home."  Moreover,  Uncle  Philip 
went  to  the  Old  North,  the  Ortho- 
dox church,  and  so  was  not  one  of 
those  who  foregathered  on  Sundays 
9 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

at  my  grandmother's.  He  was  a 
man  of  yeas  and  nays,  as  if  any- 
thing more  than  these  came  of  evil, 
or  would  come  to  it.  I  could  not 
resist  the  impression  that  Aunt 
White  had  kept  the  strong  seafarer 
under,  and  brought  him  into  sub- 
iection.  She  was  a  terror  to  such 
evil-doers  as  my  cousin  Sidney 
Herrick  and  myself,  and  some- 
thing in  her  voice  sent  tremors 
down  my  spine.  I  have  been  as- 
sured, however,  that  her  forbidding 
manner  masked  a  disposition  gen- 
erally kind.  Without  children  of 
their  own  she  and  Uncle  Philip 
had  "  the  spirit  of  adoption,"  and 
exercised  it  for  the  benefit  of  this 
one  and  that,  reaping  in  one  in- 
stance   an    unspeakable    reward    of 

lO 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

tireless  care.  Aunt  White  was  one 
of  the  Savages  of  Northeast  Har- 
bor, Mount  Desert, —  not  an  indig- 
enous tribe,  but  a  family  of  that 
name  which  is  still  flourishing  in 
those  lovely  parts ;  and  I  have 
sometimes  wondered  if  my  qualified 
regard  for  her  was  not  the  merest 
nominis  umbra,  some  early  miscon- 
ception of  an  expression  common 
in  the  family,  —  "the  Savages  of 
Mount  Desert." 

No  man  ever  had  warmer  ad- 
miration than  Uncle  Philip  had 
from  his  brother  Ambrose  and  my 
father.  He  was,  they  told  me,  as 
good  a  seaman  as  ever  trod  a  deck, 
absolutely  fearless,  and  with  a  spice 
of  daring  in  his  composition.  He 
was  one  of  the  five  hundred  Mar- 
II 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

bleheaders  who  were  liberated  from 
Dartmoor  Prison  in  1815.  Before 
his  final  capture  his  experience  was 
an  interesting  one.  He  was  prize- 
master  on  board  the  ships  "  Alfred  " 
and  "  Alexander,"  and  in  the  latter 
met  the  "  Invincible  Napoleon,"  a 
French  corvette  of  sixteen  guns, 
which  had  been  captured  by  the 
British.  She  surrendered  to  the 
"Alexander,"  and  Uncle  Philip  was 
put  in  command  of  her.  Off 
Cape  Ann  one  fine  Sunday  morn- 
ing he  was  chased  by  the  frigates 
"  Tenedos  "  and  "  Shannon,"  and 
ran  his  prize  on  Norman's  Woe, 
escaping  with  his  crew.  The  cor- 
vette was  got  off  by  the  frigates' 
boats,  but  she  was  again  captured 
by  another  privateer  before  reach- 
12 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

ing  Halifax.  Uncle  Philip  was 
soon  off  again  upon  the  dangerous 
seas,  and  was  finally  captured,  as  I 
have  said,  and  sent  to  Dartmoor 
Prison,  where,  with  nearly  or  quite 
half  of  all  the  privateersmen  hail- 
ing from  Marblehead,  he  awaited 
the  end  of  the  war. 

Ambrose  Haskell  White,  my 
father's  youngest  uncle,  was  born 
Dec.  17,  1800,  and  died  June  3, 
1 88 1.  He  followed  the  sea  for 
thirty  years,  and  for  twelve  of  these 
the  Batavia  and  China  trade.  Af- 
terward, for  many  years,  he  was  a 
commission  merchant  in  Boston. 
He  was  the  only  member  of  our 
family  to  acquire  wealth  to  even  a 
moderate  extent.  He  was  a  perfect 
gentleman  of  the  old  school,  with 
13 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

something  of  the  reserve  that  often 
came  from  the  habit  of  the  ship- 
master sailing  on  long  voyages  and 
on  no  footing  of  equality  with  the 
ship's  crew.  Blair's  sermons  were 
his  delight,  and  the  ideal  they  set 
for  him  was  perhaps  in  his  mind 
when  he  advised  me  frankly  against 
entering  the  ministry.  For  Daniel 
Webster  he  had  a  boundless  rever- 
ence, and  probably  never  believed 
one  allegation  against  his  personal 
character.  There  never  was  a  bet- 
ter brother,  and  in  my  grandmoth- 
er's imagination  he  was  a  kind  of 
friendly  deity.  His  wife,  Harriet 
Spaulding,  of  Newburyport,  was  a 
lady  of  such  lovely  manners  and 
such  kindly  heart  that  she  "  made 
human  nature  seem  beautiful "  to 
14 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

all    who    had    the  privilege    of   her 
acquaintance. 

One  of  my  father's  earliest  rec- 
ollections was  of  the  frigate  "  Con- 
stitution's "  successful  escape  from 
three  British  men-of-war.  This 
was  Sunday,  April  3,  18 14.  The 
"  Constitution "  ran  into  Marble- 
head  Harbor,  and  there  was  great 
excitement,  the  people  watching 
the  chase  from  the  roofs  and  stee- 
ples, and  expecting  the  bombardment 
of  the  town.  In  an  earlier  and 
much  more  tragical  event  my  father 
had  taken  a  not  dishonorable  part. 
He  had  gone  "  down  on  the  head  " 
to  see  the  terrible  fight  between 
the  "  Chesapeake  "  and  "  Shannon," 
which  resulted  so  disastrously  for  the 
"  Chesapeake."  One  of  her  crew 
IS 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

was  "  Uncle  Frederick ; "  that  is, 
William  Frederick  who  married  my 
father's  aunt.  Remember  White.  He 
was  "  the  mildest-mannered  man"  that 
ever  was  engaged  in  such  a  monstrous 
business ;  but  when  the  "Chesapeake  " 
was  boarded,  and  he  was  cornered 
between  decks  by  a  British  tar,  he 
opened  his  head  with  his  board- 
ing hatchet,  and  ever  afterward  had 
the  burden  of  that  act  upon  his  soul. 
My  grandmother  was  washing  that 
day,  and  when  Charles,  my  father's 
oldest  brother  (i  802-1 846),  came 
home,  and  she  asked,  "  Where 's 
John  ? "  and  he  made  answer, 
"  Down  on  the  head  with  Ben 
(i  807-1 857)  seein'  the  foight,"  she 
dried  her  arms,  rolled  down  her 
sleeves,  and  went  in  search  of  them. 
16 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

In  February,  1815,  the  town  was 
illuminated  for  the  peace  of  that 
year,  and  father  had  a  lively  recol- 
lection of  going  round  with  one  of 
his  brothers  to  see  the  windows  all 
ablaze.  The  next  August  and  Sep- 
tember were  months  of  fearful  storm, 
a  hailstorm  in  August  being  long  re- 
membered for  the  destruction  which 
it  brought  upon  the  town.  Septem- 
ber 23  came  the  September  Gale, 
which  figured  so  importantly  in  the 
recollections  of  all  persons  who  were 
then  living  on  the  New  England 
coast.  Garrison,  who  was  then  liv- 
ing in  Lynn,  never  forgot  it  ;  Whit- 
tier  made  it  the  subject  of  his  first 
literary  effort  in  a  manuscript-book 
his  mother  made  for  him ;  and 
Holmes  embalmed  his  memory  of 
2  17 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

it  in  his  verses,  "  The  September 
Gale."  But  it  was  a  storm  of  Sep- 
tember 2  or  September  3  which 
wrought  my  father's  greatest  woe. 
His  father  sailed  for  Grand  Bank 
September  i,  and  was  sighted  the 
next  day,  but  never  again.  For 
years  my  grandmother  cherished 
the  fond  hope  that  he  would  come 
again,  but  she  was  solitary  in  her 
vain  imagination. 

The  loss  of  her  husband  left 
Mother  Chadwick,  as  we  always 
called  her,  with  six  children  to  care 
for,  the  youngest  but  eighteen 
months  old.  The  oldest  boy  was 
thirteen,  and  he  and  the  others  soon 
found  ways  of  helping  their  mother, 
who  was  desperately  poor.  Parson 
Bartlett,  who  was  her  minister  from 
18 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

1811  until  1849,  was  a  friend  and 
an  adviser  whom  she  could  ill  have 
spared.  When  my  father  was  seven 
he  used  to  go  up  to  the  Ferry,  the 
Marblehead  side  of  Salem  Harbor, 
with  his  brother,  and  get,  time  after 
time,  a  peck  of  corn,  the  gift  of 
Uncle  Mike  Haskell,  carry  it  up  to 
Forest  Mills  and  have  it  ground, 
and  then  carry  home  the  meal.  The 
round  trip  was  some  seven  miles. 
Sometimes  the  growing  boy  had  for 
his  supper  a  single  baked  potato. 
His  early  schooling  was  but  slight, 
but  after  he  began  to  go  to  sea  he 
studied  navigation.  When  he  was 
ten  years  old  Uncle  Tom  Haskell 
gave  him  a  wood-horse  and  saw,  and 
a  sled  to  drag  them  on.  He  was 
my  grandmother's  uncle,  and  I  well 
19 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

remember  him,  — a  man  of  violent 
temper  and  benignant  face,  with 
silver  hair  that  was  a  glorious  crown, 
and  every  way  most  good  to  see. 
He  was  one  of  the  many  who  gath- 
ered before  church  at  my  grand- 
mother's, where  dried  flag-root,  dried 
orange-peel,  and  peppermints  were 
portioned  out  with  much  discrimina- 
tion. There  was  always  a  cloud 
upon  his  reputation,  because  in  1817 
he  was  accessory  to  the  breaking  of 
Uncle  Mike  Haskell's  will  which 
gave  Mother  Chadwick  six  hundred 
dollars,  which  to  her  would  have 
meant  being  "rich  beyond  the 
dreams  of  avarice;"  and  even  the 
sixty  that  she  got  was  something 
wonderful.  But,  for  all  that,  he 
showed  much  kindness  to  her  and 
20 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

her  boys.  For  two  years,  when  he 
was  ten  and  eleven,  my  father  helped 
his  mother  a  good  deal  with  his 
wood-sawing.  At  the  best  he  could 
saw  a  cord  a  day,  and  earn  fifty  cents. 
This  he  often  did  when  he  was  saw- 
ing wood  for  the  fishermen  to  take 
on  their  vessels.  During  these  ten- 
der years  he  also  worked  on  fish, 
carrying  them  to  the  "  flakes "  to 
dry,  and  oflT  again,  working  some- 
times ten  hours  a  day,  and  getting 
eight  cents  an  hour  because  he  did 
so  well,  when  only  six  had  been 
agreed  upon,  —  a  man  getting  ten 
cents ;  and  he  was  a  little  fellow  for 
his  years. 

In  his  school  days,  playing  truant 
with  his  brother  Ben  "  up  to  the 
Ferry,"  Ben  got  a  serious  hurt  climb- 

21 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

ing  into  a  wagon  by  the  wheel.  My 
father  had  to  be  the  bearer  of  ill  tid- 
ings to  his  mother,  and  it  was  more 
than  one  bad  quarter  of  an  hour  he 
had  about  it,  then  and  for  months 
after  when  Ben  couldn't  walk.  To 
go  to  meeting  Sundays  was  inexor- 
able law,  and  the  boys  must  go  to 
bed  early  Saturday  nights  to  have 
their  one  suit  washed  and  mended. 
The  Ferry  was  a  magnet  that  drew 
my  father  powerfully.  When  Presi- 
dent Monroe  came  to  town,  July  8, 
1 8 17,  he  spent  most  of  the  day  going 
to  the  Ferry  and  returning  several 
times,  after  getting  a  bad  hurt  from 
a  peaked  fence,  which  he  was  climb- 
ing to  see  the  President.  But  he 
saw  him,  and  therein  was  more  fortu- 
nate than  Whittier,  who  set  out  in 
22 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

search  of  him  in  Haverhill,  and  mis- 
took for  his  footprints  those  of  an 
elephant  which  had  disputed  with 
him  the  honors  of  the  day.  To  make 
a  sure  thing  of  it,  my  grandmother 
kept  both  Saturday  and  Sunday  even- 
ings sacredly,  and  her  children  were 
subjected  to  close  confinement  from 
sundown  at  Saturday  until  Monday 
morning,  except  for  going  to  church 
and  Sunday-school.  My  father 
never  kept  back  a  cent  of  his  earn- 
ings for  his  private  uses.  They  all 
went  to  his  mother;  and  when  one 
day  the  family  was  in  sore  distress, 
he  went  into  pitch-penny  "down  to 
wharf"  with  two  cents,  to  see  what 
he  could  do.  He  had  a  dangerous 
run  of  luck,  and  took  home  his  win- 
nings, forty  cents,  to  his  mother. 
23 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

She  at  first  refused  to  touch  the  un- 
clean thing;  but  her  children  were 
hungry,  and  there  was  not  a  cent  in 
the  house  to  buy  bread,  and  she  suc- 
cumbed to  the  insistence  of  her  boy. 
It  was  not  at  all  like  her  to  do  so, 
but  with  her  Puritan  conscience  she 
had  a  wondrous  heart  of  mother- 
hood. 

Her  own  children  did  not  exhaust 
its  fount  of  kindliness.  Her  mother 
dying  in  1808,  she  took  her  brother 
Ambrose,  then  seven  years  old,  into 
her  family,  and  mothered  him  until 
he  reached  maturity.  In  18 19  her 
sister  Susannah  died,  her  husband 
went  to  "  the  Far  Indies,"  and 
Mother  Chadwick  adopted  her  only 
child,  John  Peach,  a  baby  some 
eighteen  months  old.  To  her.he  was 
24 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

as  one  of  her  own  children,  living 
with  her  until  his  marriage  in  1846, 
and  amply  repaying  all  her  early  sac- 
rifice and  care.  Somewhat  later, 
Uncle  John  White  losing  his  wife, 
she  took  him  and  his  children  into 
her  little  house,  and  did  for  them  as 
best  she  could.  When  I  began  to 
know  her  in  the  forties,  —  and  she 
was  going  on  from  sixty  to  seventy 
years  of  age,  —  she  was  so  placid  that 
it  seemed  as  if  she  never  could  have 
known  the  burden  of  anxiety,  the 
touch  of  care.  She  helped  her 
daughter's  tailoring,  always,  with  sur- 
prising prodigality  for  one  whose  res 
angusta  domi  had  been  so  extremely 
narrow,  demanding  an  extra  quarter 
of  a  yard  for  my  trousers  to  avoid  an 
unseemly  gore  in  the  waistband.  She 
25 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

braided  and  "  drew  in  "  innumerable 
mats,  making  a  yellow  dye  for  her 
pieces  from  lichens  which  —  kind 
Heaven  forgive  ! —  I  scraped  for  her 
from  the  pasture  rocks;  but  she  al- 
ways had  time  for  any  one  of  her 
several  favorite  books,  of  which 
"  Moses  His  Choice  "  was  her  pe- 
culiar joy.  That,  like  some  of  the 
others,  had  lost  its  covers  and  a  few 
of  the  opening  pages.  At  her  death 
in  1870,  in  her  ninetieth  year,  her 
widowhood  had  been  fifty-five  years 
long ;  and  under  her  name  and  her 
husband's  on  the  stone  on  "  the  old 
hill "  it  is  written,  "  And  there  was 
no  more  sea." 

In  his  thirteenth  year   my  father 
began  that  seafaring  life  which,  with 
brief  interruptions,  he  followed  until 
26 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

i860.  Until  the  last  days  of  his  life 
he  could  remember  on  what  day  he 
sailed  each  time,  and  on  what  days 
he  set  out  for  home  and  got  there, 
how  much  salt  he  carried,  and  how 
much  of  it  he  wet,  how  many  quin- 
tals of  fish  he  got,  and  how  the  wind 
veered  on  such  and  such  day.  His 
first  fishing  was  with  Uncle  Tom 
Haskell  for  mackerel  around  Block 
Island,  and  on  the  Jersey  coast. 
One  catch  was  brought  into  New 
York,  and  packed  upon  the  Brooklyn 
side.  He  got  in  a  little  more  school- 
ing, and  March  20,  1824,  he  sailed 
for  the  first  time  for  the  Grand  Bank 
of  Newfoundland  in  the  schooner 
"  Mary,"  with  Skipper  John  Good- 
win. The  name,  the  same  as  that 
borne  by  the  ill-fated  vessel  in  which 
27 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

his  father  had  been  lost,  must  have 
chilled  his  mother's  heart  with  sad 
foreboding.  It  was  a  hard  beginning. 
The  first  night  it  blew  a  heavy  gale, 
so  that  a  two-reef  foresail  was  all  the 
vessel  could  bear.  It  was  bitter  cold, 
and  the  smoke  blew  back  into  the 
forecastle,  so  that  they  could  have  no 
fire.  In  those  days  the  fire  was  made 
in  the  companion-way.  Seasick  and 
homesick,  the  poor  boy  lay  in  his 
berth,  —  a  contracted  one  in  the  fore- 
peak,  the  cook's  usual  place,  —  nib- 
bling a  loaf  of  bread  his  mother  had 
made  for  him,  and  salting  it  with 
tears.  The  next  morning  there  were 
two  feet  of  ice  on  deck.  A  few  days 
after  getting  to  the  Bank  my  father 
was  thrown  down  the  main  hatch  by 
a  sudden  lurch  of  the  vessel,  and  dis- 
28 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

abled  for  some  days.  This  was  one 
of  several  accidents  that  would  have 
broken  a  less  knotted  strength.  A 
year  or  two  before,  a  sixteen-foot  oar 
had  pulled  him  off  the  wharf  into  the 
bottom  of  a  "  Moses  boat,"  and  he 
was  taken  up  for  dead.  He  was 
home  again  on  the  ist  of  August, 
twenty-five  thousand  fish  in  the  good 
"  Mary's  "  hold, which  meant  a  splen- 
did fare.  Looking  back  on  those 
one  hundred  and  thirty  days,  it 
seemed  strange  to  him  that  he  ever 
went  upon  another  trip.  The  cook 
was  generally  the  butt  of  endless 
ridicule  and  of  practical  jokes,  which 
were  sometimes  extremely  cruel,  be- 
sides general  abuse.  Crews  varied  in 
the  degree  of  their  brutality.  That 
of  the  "  Mary  "  was  one  of  the  worst, 
29 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

and  my  father  told  me  that  he  should 
not  have  survived  the  ordeal  if  it  had 
not  been  for  the  kindness  of  Dick 
Ireson,a  nephew  of"  Old  Flood,"  the 
hero  of  Whittier's  ballad,  who  stood 
between  him  and  the  worst  devices  of 
his  enemies.  Nevertheless  he  sailed 
again  in  the  same  vessel  September 
3,  the  skipper  delaying  sailing  for  a 
day  that  he  and  his  crew  might  see 
General  Lafayette,  who  was  then 
making  his  triumphal  progress 
through  the  country.  All  day  there 
was  a  pouring  rain.  Some  three 
weeks  out,  a  barrel  of  mackerel  fell 
upon  his  back  and  nearly  finished 
him.  Getting  home  December  3, 
still  seriously  ailing  from  the  crush- 
ing blow  he  had  received,  he  went  to 
school  again  until  the  time  came  for 
30 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

fitting  out  for  the  spring  fare.  This 
time  he  sailed  with  his  Uncle  John 
White  in  the  schooner  "  Hope,"  and 
in  the  same  vessel  with  the  same 
skipper  until  1831,  two  fares  each 
year,  making  at  the  best  |200  a  year. 
It  was  easy  in  those  times  to  hire  a 
man  for  one  fare  for  I75  to  ^100,  but 
my  father  always  went  "  on  shares." 

The  year  1830  was  a  memorable 
one  in  my  father's  life.  Then  he 
for  the  first  time  met  my  mother, 
Jane  Stanley  (born  April  28,  181 2; 
died  February  18,  1874).  His  first 
sight  of  her  was  not  auspicious,  for 
she  was  sitting  in  the  chimney-corner 
crying  with  the  toothache.  Her 
brothers  were  plaguing  her,  and  my 
father's  sympathy  was  the  beginning 
of  the  happy  end.  She  had  just 
31 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

come  back  to  the  old  home  from 
Oxford,  Mass.,  where,  since  1827, 
she  had  been  a  factory  girl  in  Slater's 
mills.  The  town  had  been  ruined 
by  the  embargo  and  the  war,  and 
Father  Stanley  had  taken  his  whole 
family  and  gone  to  Oxford,  in  order 
that  the  children  might  work  in  the 
factory.  The  Stanley  house  in 
Marblehead  was  one  of  the  oldest 
in  the  town,  with  the  upper  story 
jutting  out  over  the  lower  for  con- 
venience (at  least  so  they  said)  in 
shooting  Indians  in  case  of  siege. 
The  chimney  was  of  vast  propor- 
tions, and,  sitting  in  the  corner,  one 
could  look  up  and  see  the  wandering 
stars.  Father  Stanley,  publicly  known 
as  "  Master  Alec,"  was  a  cripple 
from  his  birth.  In  our  time  such  a 
32 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

trouble  would  have  surgical  remedy 
at  once;  then  it  was  suffered  to  go 
on  and  increase.  But  he  was  an 
active  boy,  and  one  year  went  to  the 
Banks.  He  was  an  inveterate 
smoker,  and  one  of  the  minor  pleas- 
ures of  my  childhood  was  to  see 
him  light  his  pipe  with  his  burning- 
glass.  His  physical  limitation  was 
turned  to  intellectual  account.  He 
was  the  champion  checker  player  of 
the  town.  You  would  think  you 
were  doing  finely,  taking  piece  after 
piece,  and  suddenly  you  were  com- 
pletely done  for.  He  always  in- 
sisted that  Benjamin  Greenleaf,  whose 
famous  arithmetic  lasted  for  two 
generations  of  New  England  boys 
and  girls,  had  treated  him  dishon- 
estly. Greenleaf  was  teaching  in  the 
3  33 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

town,  and  Father  Stanley's  story  was 
that  they  made  the  arithmetic  to- 
gether, and  then  came  the  war,  and 
they  could  not  get  a  publisher ;  and 
Greenleaf  went  off  with  the  manu- 
script, and  ultimately  published  it, 
and  made  himself  comfortable  for 
life.  Father  Stanley  particularly 
claimed  all  those  tremendous  prob- 
lems concerning  the  woman  who 
"  went  to  market  with  a  basket  of 
eggs,"  and  others  of  that  sort.  One 
thing  is  sure  :  he  had  all  those  prob- 
lems at  his  tongue's  end,  and  a  pri- 
vate repertory  of  others  like  unto 
them.  I  always  fancied  that  he 
looked  very  much  like  Benjamin 
Franklin.  His  wife,  Jane  Wills, 
died  in  1837,  so  that  I  never  knew 
her. 

34 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

It  was  between  the  spring  and  fall 
fares  of  183 1  that  father  and  mother 
were  engaged  to  each  other.  They 
were  married  by  Parson  Bartlett, 
Jan.  19,  1834.  Parson  Bartlett  was 
very  anxious  for  some  years  that 
they  should  join  the  church,  but 
mother  thought  she  "  was  not  good 
enough,"  and  father  felt  sure  that, 
if  she  was  n't,  he  was  n't ;  and  so 
they  never  did  it.  My  father  would 
plague  my  mother  sometimes  about 
their  courting  days,  and  she  would 
say,  blushing  like  a  rose  in  June, 
"  Father,  how  can  you  be  so  silly  ? " 
Or  I  would  do  the  plaguing,  beg  her 
to  tell  me  all  about  it,  and  then  she 
would  say,  "  Father,  how  can  you  sit 
there  and  let  that  boy  go  on  in  such 
a  way  ? "  But  in  truth  they  were 
35 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

both  very  reticent  about  their  love 
affairs.  Not  until  the  night  when 
mother  was  "fading  away  from  the 
land  of  the  leal,"  and  father  and  I 
were  waiting  in  another  room  for  her 
last  awakening,  were  his  lips  unsealed. 
That  story  I  may  not  confide  to  any 
other,  but  it  was  very  beautiful  in  its 
frank  simplicity.  I  cannot  conceive 
of  a  more  tender  and  unselfish  love 
than  theirs,  yet  there  was  no  outward 
demonstration.  Even  when  father 
went  to  sea  or  came  home  again,  I 
think  there  was  no  mutual  embrace 
before  the  children's  eyes.  When 
he  was  coming  in,  some  one  would 
rush  in  and  say,  "  Mrs.  Chadwick," 
or  "  Aunt  Jane,"  "  your  husband  's 
coming  up  the  harbor."  I  can  see 
her  now  going  about  her  work  with 
36 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

wilful  steadiness ;  and  when  father 
came  in  how  her  color  heightened  as 
he  took  her  hand  and  said,  "  How 
are  you,  Jane  ?  "  and  she  answered 
in  some  simple  fashion. 

When  he  came  home  in  1834, 
Nov.  25,  he  found  a  little  daughter 
two  days  old  awaiting  him.  She  was 
named  Jane  Elizabeth,  but  we  called 
her  Jennie  in  her  maturer  years. 
Father  had  now  come  to  be  himself 
the  master  of  a  vessel,  and  was 
"  Skipper  Chadwick,"  or  "  Cap'n 
Chadwick,"  to  his  friends  for  the  re- 
mainder of  his  life.  The  first  vessel 
which  he  sailed  as  skipper  was  the 
"  Ploughboy  "  in  1832,  when  he  was 
only  twenty-two  years  old.  But  he 
let  no  man  despise  his  youth.  Drink 
was  one  of  the  dangers  with  which  he 
37 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

had  to  contend,  his  own  temperance 
being  always  strict  without  being 
total  abstinence.  Once  a  drunken 
hand  grew  mutinous,  but  was  brought 
to  terms  when  the  young  skipper 
took  up  a  windlass-bar,  and  with 
a  strong  expression  threatened  to 
knock  out  his  brains.  At  another 
time  the  offending  keg  of  liquor  — 
"kag"  was  the  usual  pronunciation 
—  was  poured  into  the  sea.  His 
profanity  had  none  of  Andrew  Jack- 
son's genial  latitude,  and  it  was 
instinctively  reserved  for  great  occa- 
sions. But  he  frequently  in  middle 
life  strengthened  his  speech  with 
terms  which  were  undoubtedly  cor- 
ruptions of  profane  usage.  "*Od 
dast  you ! "  was  the  worst  of  these, 
and  I  remember  that  I  once  invited 
38 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

it  by  throwing  a  bean-bag  (one  used 
in  a  delightful  game)  and  knocking 
his  pipe,  which  he  had  just  filled  and 
lighted,  out  of  his  mouth,  and  break- 
ing it  into  pieces.  It  came  back 
with  a  vehemence  that  would  have 
hurt  me  a  good  deal  if  1  had  not 
dodged  behind  a  door.  He  dearly 
loved  his  pipe,  and  when  times  were 
hard  in  1857,  and  we  were  all  of  us 
on  short  rations,  he  said  he  would 
give  up  anything  else  sooner  than  his 
tobacco.  He  had  given  it  up  in 
1837,  but  he  would  never  make  the 
sacrifice  again.  He  avoided  unclean- 
ness  in  his  speech  even  more  com- 
pletely than  profanity.  He  not  only 
avoided  it  absolutely,  but  he  would 
not  tolerate  it  in  others.  Many  a 
time  in  the  shoemaker's  shop  I  have 
39 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

seen  him  blush  at  some  questionable 
narration  ;  and,  when  his  own  back- 
shop  was  polluted,  he  would  say, 
though  the  offender  were  some 
valued  customer,  "  Stop  that,  or  get 
out  of  here."  At  the  same  time  he 
could  not  bear  to  have  the  ancient 
landmarks  removed  or  misnamed ; 
and  there  was  a  half-sunken  rock  in 
the  harbor,  which  in  ruder  times  had 
been  given  a  name  not  fit  for  ears 
polite.  Some  one,  with  the  best  in- 
tentions in  the  world,  had  given  it  a 
new  name,  and  once,  when  my  father 
was  taking  out  a  sailing  party,  the 
new  name  was  given  in  answer  to  a 
question  as  to  what  rock  it  was. 
Instantly  my  father  flashed  out  in- 
dignantly the  traditional  name  ;  and 
the  dovecotes  were  fluttered  visibly. 
40 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

In  1834,  the  year  of  his  mar- 
riage, my  father's  schooner  was  the 
"  Statesman  ;  "  and  he  owned  one- 
third  of  her.  One  of  his  hands 
died  on  the  first  trip,  the  only  time 
he  met  with  this  misfortune.  The 
winter  of  '3^-35  was  one  of  the 
happiest  of  his  life.  There  was  a 
baby  in  the  house,  and  he  was  now 
adding  some  I50  a  winter  to  his 
clear  gains,  by  making  shoes  be- 
tween his  return  in  the  late  au- 
tumn and  his  beginning  to  fit  out 
for  the  spring  fare.  He  had  been 
doing  this  since  1825.  He  was  not 
a  rapid  workman  on  the  bench,  but 
few  workmen  could  make  a  better 
shoe.  The  stitch  was  never  length- 
ened, even  in  the  shank,  to  hurry  up 
the  work.  It  was  this  winter  or  the 
41 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

next  that  he  had  an  amusing  experi- 
ence. He  was  living  at  the  foot  of 
Orne  Street,  in  the  Lawrence  house, 
and  he  started  for  Mother  Stanley's 
with  little  Jane  in  his  arms.  Idler's 
Hill  (so  called  because  it  was  a  fav- 
orite loafing  place)  one  of  the  long- 
est and  steepest  in  the  town,  was 
very  slippery,  and  near  the  top  he 
began  to  slip  backward  with  his 
precious  freight.  Afraid  of  injur- 
ing that,  his  hands  were,  as  it  were, 
tied,  and  he  kept  on  slipping  and 
slipping  until  he  brought  up  with 
his  back  against  Hawkes's  store  at 
the  foot  of  the  hill.  The  small 
boys  coasting  on  the  hill  enjoyed 
his  discomfiture  exceedingly.  So 
did  not  he. 

His    first   year   on   the   "  States- 
42 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

man "  was  a  prosperous  one,  but 
his  second  one  (1835)  ^^^  ^^  only 
in  part.  His  fall  fare  was  one  of 
the  meanest  that  he  ever  got,  only 
5.40  quintals.  Before  sailing  in 
the  spring  of  1836  he  exchanged 
his  third  of  the  "  Statesman "  for 
a  third  of  the  "  Hero,"  paying 
t333'33  ^or  his  bargain.  The 
"  Hero "  was  fourteen  tons  larger 
than  the  "  Statesman,"  which  was 
only  seventy-two.  My  father  trod 
her  deck  for  eleven  successive  sea- 
sons, twenty-one  fares  in  all,  only 
one  fare  in  1841.  To  his  mem- 
ory in  after  years  she  was  more  a 
living  creature,  a  beloved  friend, 
than  an  inanimate  thing.  He  dwelt 
upon  her  virtues  as  upon  those  of  a 
dear  child  that  he  had  lost.  But  his 
43 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

first  trip  on  her,  though  he  brought 
home  twenty-two  thousand  fish,  was 
one  of  the  most  miserable  he  ever 
sailed.  It  was  on  this  trip  that  his 
crew  were  mutinous.  The  offenders 
were  got  rid  of  on  his  return,  and  in 
the  fall  everything  went  smoothly 
until  November  8,  when  in  a  very 
heavy  gale  he  lost  a  shot  of  cable, 
one  hundred  and  eighty  fathoms, 
and  shipped  a  sea  that  knocked  off 
the  stern  a  good  bit,  and  made  it 
every  way  desirable  to  get  home  as 
soon  as  possible.  On  his  return, 
August  I,  1837,  he  found  a  second 
daughter  in  the  house,  Sarah,  born 
May  17,  and  destined  to  be  his  care- 
taker for  twenty-two  years  after  her 
mother's  death  in  1874.  How  lit- 
tle could  he  imagine  when  he  came 
44 


CAP'N     CHADWICK 

home  in  1837,  and  found  the  help- 
less child  upon  its  mother's  breast, 
that  he  would  find  in  hers  for  many- 
years  a  mother's  patient  heart !  The 
year  1 83  8  —  which  was,  for  many  per- 
sons, because  of  the  crash  of  1837, 
one  of  the  blackest  on  the  list  — 
was  for  my  father  the  most  success- 
ful of  his  life.  On  his  spring  fare  he 
got  750  quintals,  and  on  both  fares 
cleared  $joo.  His  happiest  day 
was  ever  that  on  which  he  sailed 
again  into  the  harbor,  whether  he 
had  wet  all  his  salt  or  only  half  of 
it.  He  always  protested  that  a  man 
did  n't  know  what  happiness  was  who 
did  not  have  the  joy  of  coming  back 
to  weans  and  wife  from  a  sea-voy- 
age. What  blessed  times  those 
weeks  between  the  end  of  the  first 
45 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

fare  and  the  beginning  of  the  second 
always  were  for  me,  when  I  was  old 
enough  to  go  alone  or  with  one  of 
my  sisters  to  the  "  washing-out,"  or 
to  carry  around  the  tokens  of  good 
will  that  were  expected  as  religiously 
as  wedding-cards  in  good  society. 
"  Washing-out  "  meant  the  washing 
of  the  fish  which  had  been  packed 
in  salt  in  the  schooner's  hold.  This 
was  sometimes  done  in  a  pound 
lashed  to  the  side  of  the  schooner,  a 
little  off  from  the  beach,  and  some- 
times on  the  beach.  Once  washed, 
the  fish  were  carried  to  the  flakes 
and  dried,  and  then  packed  in  the 
warehouse.  Father's  dinner  was 
always  sent  to  him  in  two  tin  pails, 
one  of  them  full  of  tea.  How  those 
tin  pails  did  shine  !  It  would  have 
46 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

made  my  mother  sick  to  discover 
that  hers  were  not  the  brightest  on 
the  scene.  As  for  the  tokens  of 
good  will  we  carried  round,  it  was 
a  nice  business  who  should  have 
only  crackers,  much  prized  for  their 
sea  savor,  and  who  should  have  in 
addition  a  piece  of  smoked  halibut 
or  some  "  tongues  and  sounds,"  or 
a  smoked  hagdon,  gamiest  of  the 
game  that  is  not  quite  inedible. 
Hardly  less  interesting  was  the 
packing  of  my  father's  chest;  and 
nothing  could  exceed  the  neatness 
and  the  carefulness  with  which  my 
mother  bent  above  this  sacred  task, 
and  with  the  haunting  fear  each 
time  that  it   might  be  the  last. 

In    1839    ^^^   profit    on    the  two 
fares  fell  off  ^300  from  the  previous 
47 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

year.  In  1840  his  fortune  was  still 
worse.  That  spring  he  had  bought 
a  new,  small  two-story  house  on 
Stacey  Street.  It  was  a  very  cosey 
little  house,  with  a  bit  of  meadow 
at  the  rear,  where  the  frogs  and 
crickets  had  full  orchestras.  It  was 
just  at  the  foot  of  Elbridge  Gerry's 
garden,  and  "  the  New  Road,"  a  nar- 
row footpath  leading  to  "  Allen's 
stile"  and  the  sea-front,  was  only 
a  few  steps  away. 

On  his  first  fare  in  1840  my 
father  lost  I50,  and  on  his  second 
did  not  much  more  than  make  this 
up.  This  was  the  more  discourag- 
ing because  on  his  arrival,  Novem- 
ber 20,  he  found  a  boy  awaiting 
him,  the  boy  who  writes  this  story, 
born  October  19,  when  the  unspeak- 
48 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

ably  inane  enthusiasm  for  hard  cider 
and  William  Henry  Harrison  was 
filling  all  the  air.  He  was  hard  put 
to  it  for  money  to  meet  current  ex- 
penses, having  put  all  he  could  rake 
together  into  the  little  house.  He 
took  what  "  lumping "  he  could 
get ;  that  is,  helping  others  to  wash 
out  and  handle  their  fish.  In  1841 
he  went  only  one  fare,  one  hundred 
and  forty-five  days,  from  April  27 
to  September  19.  Twenty-two 
thousand  fish  meant  a  good  catch; 
but  he  did  not  get  a  cent  for  his 
share  till  the  next  April  ;  and  so 
again  it  was  close  pickings.  The 
bounty  money  (paid  by  the  United 
States  Government  to  encourage  sea- 
faring) was  never  so  welcome  as  this 
year.  The  amount  was  $2^.  The 
4  49 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

next  year  the  fish  brought  only 
1 1. 7  5  a  quintal,  whereas  at  the  best 
they  brought  $3.00.  "A  man  had 
to  cut  his  rashers  thin  to  live " 
was  my  father's  comment  on  the 
situation.  For  two  good  trips  he 
got  only  I250.  In  1843  ^^^  ^^^^ 
fare  was  "  a  regular  Bonanza,"  one 
thousand  quintals  !  —  and  his  net 
gains  for  the  season  amounted  to 
I500.  The  next  year  was  less  for- 
tunate, and  the  fall  fare  had  an  inci- 
dent that  entailed  for  my  father 
countless  hours  of  miserable  pain, 
and  this  for  many  years.  Four 
days  out,  in  bad  weather,  a  block 
somewhere  aloft  was  split,  and  the 
shive  and  pin,  following  with  hor- 
rible momentum,  struck  him  on  the 
head.  When  he  came  to,  he  imag- 
50 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

ined  that  the  vessel  had  been  struck 
by  lightning,  and  his  first  question 
was  for  her  safety.  He  would  not 
have  the  vessel  put  about  for  home, 
and  the  men  did  what  they  could  for 
him.  Their  remedies  were  drastic, 
but  they  were  measurably  effective. 
All  that  winter,  however,  Parson 
Bartlett  was  a  frequent  visitor,  tend- 
ing the  ugly  wound ;  for  Parson 
Bartlett  was  a  physician  literally,  as 
well  as  a  physician  of  souls.  Even 
the  orthodox  did  not  object  to  his 
gratuitous  treatment  of  their  bodies. 
His  face  was  rubicund,  and  he  was 
a  goodly  man  to  see. 

The   year    1845    ^^^    ^   tolerably 

good  year;  but  the    year  1846   was 

an  annus  mirabilis,  a  wonderful  year 

of  sorrow  both  for  my  father  and  the 

S' 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

town.  The  spring  fare  was  so  un- 
profitable that  my  father  moored  the 
"  Hero  "  in  the  harbor  after  washing 
out  his  fish,  resolved  not  to  try  his 
luck  again  that  year.  Later  he  got 
another  skipper  for  her,  who  backed 
out;  and  my  father,  recovering  his 
spirits,  got  a  good  crew,  and  sailed 
September  3.  Ten  days  after  his 
arrival  on  the  Bank  came  the  great 
gale  of  September  19,  which  since 
then  has  been  for  Marblehead  "  the 
September  Gale  "  par  excellence ;  also 
"  the  gale  of  '46.**  Out  of  twenty- 
six  schooners  that  sailed  for  a  fall  fare 
only  sixteen  returned ;  and  one  on  a 
long  fare  made  the  whole  number 
lost  eleven,  with  sixty-seven  men  and 
boys.  I  never  tired  of  hearing  my 
father's  story.  Hardly  ever  did  I 
52 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

go  home  during  the  last  years  of  his 
life  without  encouraging  him  to  tell 
it ;  and  he  was  not  unwilling,  though 
he  would  say,  "  What  do  you  want 
to  hear  about  that  again  for?" 

The  1 8th  was  a  lowering  day,  and 
ominous  of  storm.  On  the  morning 
of  the  19th  the  wind  began  to  blow 
at  seven  o'clock,  and  by  ten  o'clock 
it  was  blowing  a  gale.  There  was  no 
rain,  but  the  air  was  thick  with 
"  wind-food,"  not  fog,  but  a  dry  mist, 
which  lifted  about  noon.  Until  this 
lifted  you  could  not  see  a  quarter  of 
a  mile.  As  soon  as  the  wind  began 
to  blow  hard,  father  hove  up,  and  ran 
to  speak  with  John  White,  his  cousin, 
son  of  his  Uncle  John  (schooner 
"  Clinton  "),  but  could  n't  find  him. 
He  had  already  hoisted  his  anchor, 
53 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

and  gone  to  the  westward.  The 
"  Hero  "  was  then  laid  under  a  bal- 
ance mainsail  (a  small  mainsail  kept 
set  while  fishing)  and  head-of-jib  till 
twelve  o'clock.  Only  one  vessel  was 
sighted  during  the  whole  gale,  and 
that  was  the  "  Hezron,"  skipper, 
Uncle  Sam  Blackler,  and  she  was 
riding  at  anchor.  At  twelve  o'clock 
the  balance  mainsail  was  taken  in  and 
the  jib  handed,  and  a  three-reef  fore- 
sail set,  the  vessel's  head  being  to 
westward  all  the  time.  As  the  after- 
noon advanced  the  wind  began  to 
haul  to  west-northwest,  blowing  as 
hard  as  ever.  At  five  o'clock  the 
foresail  blew  away  "like  an  old 
pocket  handkerchief,"  and  the  gaff 
was  hauled  down.  The  sea  was  then 
taking  the  "  Hero  "  on  the  quarter, 
54 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

and  threatening  to  "pitch-poll  her 
over ; "  that  is,  first  stand  her  on  her 
nose,  and  then  throw  her  upside  down. 
The  seas  ran  half-mast  high  and  a 
full  half-mile  long.  They  seemed 
to  break  from  the  bottom  as  if  the 
Bank  were  one  great  reef  or  shoal. 
This  was  the  critical  moment,  and 
father  determined  to  wear  the  vessel 
round.  The  chances  were  against 
success,  but  to  take  the  sea  on  the 
quarter  meant  sure  destruction.  His 
men  begged  him  not  to  do  it,  but  she 
had  good  headway,  —  about  three 
miles  an  hour,  —  and  he  told  them 
he  must  do  what  he  thought  best. 
They  could  go  below  if  they  liked. 
The  helm  was  put  hard  up,  and  the 
vessel  came  round,  and  put  her  nose 
"  to  the  old  sea "  (that  which  the 
55 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

wind  made  before  it  changed),  and  in 
five  minutes  she  was  "  riding  the 
water  like  a  bird."  For  my  father 
the  "  Hero  "  was  "  named  and  known 
by  that  hour's  feat."  A  big  lantern 
was  set  in  the  main  rigging,  but  not 
a  light  of  any  other  vessel  was  to  be 
seen.  About  half-past  nine  the  stars 
came  out,  but  the  heaviest  squalls 
were  between  that  time  and  half-past 
ten.     Then  it  began  to  moderate. 

At  daybreak  it  was  as  moderate  as 
you  could  ask,  and  one  vessel  was  in 
sight,  the  "  James  Mugford,"  skipper, 
Richard  Dixey.  A  heavy  swell  was 
rolling.  After  breakfast  a  new  fore- 
sail was  set  with  balance-mainsail  and 
jib,  and  they  stood  westward,  having 
been  blown  a  good  piece  off  the 
Bank's  southeastern  edge.  Sailing 
56 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

three  or  four  hours,  they  came  on  a 
lot  of  deck-plank,  then  a  lot  more, 
then  a  mast,  then  a  boat,  which 
proved  to  be  the  "  Sabine's,"  Samuel 
Dodd,  and  finally  water  barrels,  and 
everything  imaginable  belonging  to  a 
vessel  that  could  float.  For  the  next 
two  days  they  kept  on  sailing  through 
an  ocean  wilderness,  where  tokens  of 
destruction  greeted  them  on  either 
hand.  They  spoke  with  a  Province- 
town  vessel  which  was  going  home, 
and  another  that  had  thrown  over 
three  hundred  quintals  offish.  Sad- 
dest of  all  was  a  big  schooner,  her 
tonnage  nearly  twice  that  of  the 
"  Hero,"  on  her  beam-ends,  her 
masts  lifting  up  twenty  feet  out  of  the 
water,  and  then  plunging  down  again. 
The  "  Clinton  "  also  was  encountered, 
57 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

abandoned  by  her  crew.  Her  deck 
had  been  lifted,  and  her  skipper, 
John  White,  and  one  of  his  men 
had  been  swept  overboard  and  lost. 
He  was  a  genial  soul.  How  well  do 
I  remember  him  on  the  eve  of  his 
departure,  and  others  who  came  not 
back !  They  made  a  merry  group 
about  the  door  of  Samuel  Sparhawk's 
shop,  where  they  were  getting  their 
supplies.  My  father's  brother  Charles 
was  one  of  these.  He  was  skipper 
of  the  "  Senator,"  one  of  the  eleven 
vessels  that  were  lost. 

The  Provincetown  vessel  which 
my  father  spoke  on  the  morning 
after  the  storm  brought  home  the 
news  of  his  safety,  and  that  of  some 
others ;  but  we  were  long  in  doubt 
as  to  the  limits  of  the  disaster.  My 
58 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

mother  was  hardly  less  anxious  than 
she  would  have  been  if  the  "  Hero  " 
had  not  been  spoken.  My  uncle 
George,  her  brother,  haunted  the 
Old  North  steeple  and  the  headlands 
of  the  town,  straining  his  eyes  to 
make  out  each  approaching  vessel, 
if  haply  she  might  be  one  of  the  sur- 
vivors of  the  storm.  My  father's 
crew  were  sick  at  heart,  and  begged 
him  to  go  home,  and  his  own  incli- 
nation was  strong  enough  to  do  so, 
but  he  held  on  into  November,  and 
then  sailed,  arriving  on  the  i8th  of 
the  month.  He  was  thirty-seven 
years  old  that  day,  but  I  doubt  if 
he  or  mother  had  a  thought  of  that. 
It  stands  out  from  all  others  of  my 
boyhood  with  an  awful  vividness. 
I  went  to  the  wharf  with  "  Bedo  " 
59 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

Frost,  whose  father  was  on  board 
the  "Hero."  Appleton's  Wharf 
was  packed  with  people,  but  the 
crowd  made  a  passageway  for  the 
crew  to  pass  along,  each  with  some 
silent  friend,  all  silent.  On  one  side 
of  my  father  as  we  moved  homeward 
was  his  shoresman,  and  I  walked  on 
the  other,  the  crowd  making  a  kind 
of  hollow  square  about  us,  and  I  not 
insensible  of  the  dignity  of  the  situ- 
ation. I  can  hear  now  the  dull  plod 
of  my  father's  heavy  boots  and  feel 
the  nervous  pressure  of  his  hand.  I 
remember,  too,  that  as  we  came  out 
on  Stacey  Street  I  looked  back,  and 
saw  the  crowd  defiling  all  the  way 
through  the  New  Road.  All  day 
long  my  father  sat  in  the  neat  cellar- 
kitchen,  pleasantest  of  little  rooms, 
60 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

and  answered  with  low  voice  the 
questions  of  the  wives  and  mothers, 
the  brothers  and  the  friends,  who 
came  inquiring  for  the  living  and 
the  dead,  his  own  heart  breaking 
all  the  time  with  helpless  sympathy. 
I  remember  only  one  passionate 
outbreak:  "John  Chadwick,  do 
you  dare  to  tell  me  I  shall  never 
see  my  husband  again  ?  " 

The  fishing  business  of  the  town 
never  recovered  from  that  blow. 
Father  had  little  heart  for  it,  and 
my  mother  begged  him  not  to  go 
again.  Moreover,  she  got  Parson 
Bartlett,  who  always  had  great  in- 
fluence with  my  father,  to  intercede 
for  her.  There  was  something  stolid 
in  his  make,  and  they  would  not 
have  moved  him  if  his  will  had 
6i 


CAP'N     CHADWICK 

not  been  already  undermined.  The 
"Hero"  was  sold  In  January,  1847. 
As  the  years  went  on  he  blamed  his 
foolishness.  Selling  the  "  Hero " 
and  not  buying  the  "  Hezron,"  were 
two  regrets  to  which  he  frequently 
recurred  as  he  grew  old ;  and  with 
good  reason,  for  in  1847  ^^  entered 
on  a  period  of  ups  and  downs, — 
the  downs,  if  I  may  say  so,  in 
the  ascendant,  —  which  lasted  twenty 
years.  In  1847  ^^  fished  for  mack- 
erel in  the  Bay  and  off  Mount 
Desert.  At  Mount  Desert  he  met 
the  Stanleys,  who  are  so  numer- 
ous on  the  Cranberry  Islands,  and 
who  all  descended  from  one  of  my 
mother's  people.  "  Uncle  Peter  " 
and  the  stalwart  brothers  of  his 
generation,  so  well  known  to  early 
62 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

visitors  to  Mount  Desert,  were  the 
sons  of  that  first  settler.  In  1848 
my  father  became  part  owner  of  a 
new  and  handsome  fishing  smack, 
the  "  Cabinet,"  forty-four  tons,  and 
for  two  years  went  bay  fishing  in 
her  and  to  Brown's  Bank.  There 
was  not  much  in  it;  and  in  1850, 
mother's  birthday,  April  28,  found 
him  off  for  Grand  Bank  again  in 
the  schooner  "  Rose."  This  birth- 
day gift  my  mother  the  more  pain- 
fully appreciated,  because,  for  the 
time  being,  having  sold  the  little 
house  in  Stacey  Street,  pending  the 
completion  of  another  on  Reed's 
Hill,  we  were  living  in  a  house  on 
Little  Harbor  close  by  "  the  Fount- 
ain Yard,"  as  we  then  called  the 
space  about  my  Uncle  Bowden's 
63 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

carpenter  shop,  quite  ignorant  of 
the  reason  why  it  was  so  called, 
and  of  Agnes  Surriage's  delightful 
story.  Soon  after  my  father's  sail- 
ing there  was  a  fearful  storm,  a 
match  for  that  of  the  next  follow- 
ing spring,  in  which  Minot's  Ledge 
lighthouse  was  destroyed.  Our  house 
stood  on  a  cliff,  at  the  foot  of  which 
was  a  narrow  garden.  There  has 
been  no  garden  since  that  storm. 
The  storm  annexed  it  to  the  beach, 
and  the  sea,  breaking  against  the 
cliff,  so  shook  the  house  that  my 
mother  took  down  her  china  from 
the  shelves,  lest  it  should  fall.  That 
storm  may  not  have  reached  Grand 
Bank,  but  it  did  so  for  my  dear 
mother's  vivid  imagination  and  her 
anxious  heart;  and  so  did  every 
64 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

storm  that  blew  that  year,  until  her 
husband  came  again  upon  the  wings 
of  the  most  mighty  of  them  all, 
August  25.  How  it  did  rain  and 
blow !  We  had  been  ten  days  in 
the  new  house,  and  the  good  fare 
of  fish  nearly  half  paid  for  it  above 
the  cellar  wall.  We  were  "  the  first 
that  ever  burst "  into  that  quarter 
of  the  town.  There  were  bars  to 
let  down,  and  pastures  not  far  off, 
and  old  John  Gregory's  fish  fences 
and  warehouses  just  beyond  us  up 
the  hill.  Father  and  mother  lived 
and  loved  there  twenty-four  years, 
and  for  twenty-two  more  father  lived 
there  without  mother. 

In    1 85 1    the    Saturnian   days    re- 
turned.     Mr.  William   Humphreys, 
the     shoresman     whom    my     father 
S  6s 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

honored  above  all  the  rest  of  those 
for  whom  he  sailed,  built  the  fine  big 
schooner  "  Emmeline,"  one  hundred 
and  eight  tons  burthen,  the  old 
measurement.  She  was  launched 
June  8,  —  a  happy  boy,  who  shall  be 
nameless,  on  her  deck.  But  he  had 
a  bad  quarter  of  a  minute  when,  soon 
after  the  first  delightful  sensation 
when  the  crowd  cried,  "  There  she 
goes  ! "  the  ways  spread  and  she 
struck  heavily,  careened  a  good  deal, 
seemed  in  doubt  for  a  moment 
whether  to  stop  or  go  on,  but  at  last 
found  her  true  element.  She  had 
started  some  of  her  trunnels,  but  had 
sustained  no  serious  injury.  The 
schooner  "  Ariel  "  was  launched  about 
the  same  time,  and  the  two  vessels 
sailed  for  Boston  the  same  day  to  get 
66 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

their  salt.  They  made  a  race  of  it. 
There  was  a  throng  upon  each  jut- 
ting headland  of  the  town  and  Neck ; 
and  when  the  "  Emmeline  "  left  the 
"  Ariel  "  way,  way  behind,  I  was  like 
Dr.  Holland's  hero  who  "  felt  the  bud 
of  being  in  him  burst."  The  ensuing 
trip  was  phenomenal  in  my  father's 
experience.  Sailing  June  19  he  "  got 
in  "  September  25  with  one  thousand 
two  hundred  and  twenty  quintals  of 
fish.  He  was  off  again  October  6  to 
get  his  bounty,  which  required  four 
months  at  sea.  November  6  he 
started  for  home,  after  three  weeks 
of  good  fishing.  The  return  passage 
proved  to  be  the  worst  he  ever  knew. 
For  nearly  a  month  he  was  buffeted 
by  incessant  storms ;  and  only  when 
it  seemed  that  the  vessel  could  not 
67 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

live  another  hour,  Provincetown  light 
sent  forth  its  cheerful  gleam  and  she 
was  soon  riding  at  anchor  safe  and 
sound.  In  1853  he  sailed  in  another 
new  schooner,  the  "  Sarah  Jane,"  one 
hundred  and  twenty  tons  burthen, 
nearly  half  as  large  again  as  the 
"  Hero."  But  my  father  always  de- 
clared that  neither  the  "  Emmeline  " 
nor  the  "  Sarah  Jane  "  was  so  good  a 
sea-boat  as  the  vessel  to  whose  sur- 
passing excellence  he  was  as  true  as 
was  Leander  to  the  Hero  of  old 
days. 

"  Home-staying  hearts  are  happiest," 

and  his  was  a  home-staying  heart. 
He  loved  the  sea,  but  more  and 
more  he  dreaded  the  long  separations 
from  his  wife  and  children.  In  1854 
68 


CAP'N     CHADWICK 

the  "  Cadet  "  —  a  smaller  boat  than 
the  "  Cabinet,"  which  he  had  bought 
a  part  of  for  the  peace  and  comfort 
of  his  uncles,  Philip  and  John 
White,  who  must  still  be  fishing  in 
some  sort  —  went  ashore  on  Skinner's 
Head  in  a  big  storm  that  dragged 
almost  every  vessel  in  the  harbor 
from  her  anchorage,  but  imbedded 
the  others  safely  in  the  sand  of  River 
Head  Beach.  The  "  Cadet "  was 
repaired  and  lengthened  out  at  great 
and  vain  expense,  and  the  oversight 
which  this  business  required  had 
much  to  do  with  my  father's  staying 
at  home  in  1854.  He  built  a  little 
shop,  and  for  a  few  years  endeavored 
to  combine  shoemaking  with  the  sell- 
ing of  West  India  goods.  The  ven- 
ture was  unprofitable,  and  went  under 
69 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

in  the  crash  of  1857.  But  it  is  an  ill 
wind  that  blows  nobody  good.  The 
hard  times  blew  to  me  the  oppor- 
tunity of  my  life.  Working  with  my 
father,  I  sewing  and  he  lasting  and 
finishing,  we  made  twenty-five  pairs 
of  first  rate  slick-bottomed  ankle-ties 
a  day  at  four  cents  a  pair.  In  good 
times  they  brought  seven  cents. 
Here  was  a  dollar  for  the  joint  day's 
work.  My  father  could  not  stand 
it.  He  gave  up  the  shop  and  the 
shoemaking  and  went  to  sea  again  in 
the  "  Emmeline ; "  and  when  he 
came  back  and  found  me  anxious  to 
go  to  the  Normal  School  at  Bridge- 
water  and  my  sister  Jennie  more 
anxious  for  me  to  do  so  than  I  was 
myself,  and  glad  to  pay  the  way  in 
part  out  of  her  slender  salary  (she 
70 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

was  a  primary  school  teacher,  her 
salary  $150  a  year,  then  the  regular 
amount),  he  said  that  I  might  as 
well  be  getting  a  better  education  as 
"working  for  nothing  and  finding  my 
own  thread ; "  and  so  to  school  I 
went,  "  the  difference  to  me "  not 
measurable  in  current  coin. 

The  next  ten  years  were  for  my 
father  years  of  much  anxiety.  His 
slender  savings  shrank  from  year  to 
year,  until  he  had  only  a  few  hundred 
dollars  left.  My  sister  Jennie,  who 
was  the  apple  of  his  eye,  fell  sick 
with  a  terrible  brain  fever,  after  which 
came  a  long,  slow  convalescence,  with 
a  whole  year  of  speechless  melancholy 
for  its  most  painful  incident.  Mother 
was  aging  rapidly  under  this  dreadful 
dispensation.  In  1859  he  made  his 
71 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

last  trip  to  the  Grand  Bank,  sailing 
the  "  Sarah  Jane,"  and  getting  a  most 
miserable  fare.  Steaming  across  the 
Bank  in  1887  in  the  "  Fulda,"  I 
thought  how  he  had  spent  more  than 
twenty  solid  years  upon  that  waste  of 
waters ;  and  when  the  thick  fog 
settled  down  upon  us  I  thought 
how,  from  out  such  a  fog,  he  had 
seen  the  great  ships  looming  up  as 
they  went  driving  on.  "  Thank 
God,  my  good  fellows,  that  we  cleared 
you  ! "  cried  one  captain  from  his 
deck  as  his  ship's  quarter  almost 
grazed  the  "  Hero's  "  stern.  From 
out  the  fog  there  grew  for  us  a 
mighty  wind,  and  our  four  thousand 
tons  seemed  like  a  chip  tossed  on  the 
waves ;  and  so  I  had  a  better  chance 
to  understand  what  it  had  meant  for 
72 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

the  "  Hero,"  eighty-four  tons  bur- 
then, to  encounter  such  a  storm  as 
that  of  1 846,  —  ours  but  a  zephyr  in 
comparison  with  its  awful  stress. 

From  i860  to  1868  my  father 
worked  at  shoemaking.  My  sis- 
ter's health  had  never  been  re-es- 
tablished, and  in  1869,  August  20, 
she  died ;  but  not  until  she  had  en- 
couraged my  father  to  resume  his 
shop-keeping.  Hers  was  a  most 
indomitable  spirit,  and  from  out  the 
dying  embers  of  her  life  flashed 
many  a  spark  to  kindle  hope  again 
in  her  dear  father's  heart.  The 
new  venture  was  an  assured  success 
before  she  died, —  a  modest  one, 
and  that  was  threatened  with  de- 
struction in  the  hard  times  of  1873 
and  the  next  following  years,  when 
73 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

it  was  quite  impossible  for  my  father 
to  refuse  credit  to  the  poor  fellows 
who  were  out  of  work  and  had  no 
money.  Some  of  them  justified  his 
confidence  in  their  integrity,  and 
after  many  years  paid  up  their  old 
accounts.  Others,  and  these  his 
heaviest  debtors,  lived  comfortably 
enough  and  made  no  sign.  Alto- 
gether, he  lost  several  thousand  dol- 
lars, more  than  half  of  his  lifelong 
accumulation.  This  loss  would  have 
been  borne  less  patiently  if  his  life's 
greatest  sorrow  had  not  at  the  same 
time  befallen  him,  —  my  mother's 
death,  Feb.  i8,  1874.  We  have 
been  told  that  a  majestic  grief 
should  be  "  strong  to  consume  small 
troubles."  His  were  by  no  means 
small ;  but  my  mother's  death  made 
74 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

them,  in  comparison  with  that,  a 
matter  of  indifference.  Her  sick- 
ness was  of  short  duration.  It 
found  her  busy,  after  the  customary- 
manner  of  her  life,  doing  a  kindly 
service  to  some  one  who  needed 
mothering.  From  that  time  for- 
ward my  father's  life  was  always 
tender  with  the  glow  of  memory 
and  hope. 

His  success  in  business  was  bound 
to  be  a  modest  one,  even  in  the  best 
of  times,  for  he  could  never  find  it 
in  his  heart  to  take  advantage  of  a 
rising  market  when  he  had  stock  in 
hand.  Sheer  foolishness,  of  course  ; 
but  I  am  glad  he  had  that  kindly 
disposition.  And,  nevertheless,  — 
perhaps  not  entirely  so,  —  he  did  a 
thriving  little  business  until  Octo- 
75 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

ber,  1885,  when,  being  seventy-six 
years  old,  he  gave  over  his  busi- 
ness to  another  and  settled  down  to 
the  enjoyment  of  a  pleasant  and  se- 
rene old  age.  Easily  it  might  have 
been  that,  had  not  the  gods  seen 
otherwise ;  for  he  was  a  faithful 
reader  of  good  books  and  papers 
all  his  days,  and  he  had  many 
friends.  In  the  early  fifties  he 
took  the  National  Era,  when  "  Uncle 
Tom's  Cabin  "  was  coming  out  in  it, 
and  it  was  a  penal  offence  for  any 
one  to  open  the  paper  until  "  the  tea 
things "  were  put  away.  All  the 
great  stories  of  actual  adventure 
both  by  land  and  sea  that  appeared 
in  the  last  years  of  his  life  he  read 
until  his  eyes  grew  dim.  Besides, 
he  had  the  various  and  rich  experi- 
76 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

ence  of  his  own  life  to  draw  upon, 
and  that  of  many  old  seamates  and 
companions.  Some  of  these  he 
prized  immeasurably,  and  they  re- 
sponded generously  to  his  loving 
trust.  He  did  not  so  much  ideal- 
ize them  as  he  appreciated  their 
essential  worth.  It  was  better  than 
a  university  degree  or  a  royal  decora- 
tion, I  often  thought,  to  be  spoken 
of  as  he  spoke  of  Andrew  Paine 
and  Frank  Hiller  and  Captain  Chis- 
holm  and  some  others.  The  habit 
of  his  middle  life  was  reticent ;  but 
as  he  grew  old  he  was  both  talka- 
tive and  affable,  and,  what  was  the 
most  surprising  thing  of  all,  he  did 
a  little  quiet  boasting  now  and 
then.  There  was  one  story  tend- 
ing to  this  complexion  which  he 
77 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

told  me  several  times  in  the  last 
years.  It  was  about  a  time  when 
he  and  his  brother  Charles  were 
sailing  with  their  Uncle  John,  who 
fell  sick  on  the  home  passage  and  put 
Charles,  as  the  older,  in  charge  of 
the  vessel.  On  one  occasion  he  had 
told  my  father,  "John,  you  know 
nothing  and  fear  nothing ; "  and 
the  sharp  speech  was  too  well  re- 
membered when,  as  he  drew  near 
the  coast,  Charles  could  not  quite 
make  out  his  bearings.  Appealing 
to  my  father  he  was  reminded  of 
his  former  saying;  but,  the  situa- 
tion growing  desperate,  my  father 
came  down  from  his  high  horse 
and  helped  his  brother  out.  That 
was  the  time  when  such  a  sea  was 
running  that  the  channel  between 
78 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

Marblehead  Light  and  Cat  Island 
Rock  broke  from  the  bottom,  and 
through  that  furious  welter  of  the 
waves  the  "  Hope "  came  tearing 
home. 

The  hope  of  a  long  evening  rest 
was  rudely  broken  when,  in  Janu- 
ary, 1888,  he  was  overtaken  by  a 
dangerous  illness  which  was  of  long 
continuance  and  left  him  but  the 
shadow  of  his  former  self.  A  mere 
accident  had  induced  a  cold,  and 
this  ended  in  pneumonia  or  some 
profound  bronchial  inflammation. 
The  vigor  of  his  constitution  de- 
clared itself  in  the  wonderful  rally 
that  he  made  from  such  a  blow. 
But  his  old  strength  did  not  re- 
turn. No  one  could  have  more 
tender  care  than  my  sister  lavished 
79 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

on  him  during  the  years  of  waver- 
ing hope  and  gradual  decline ;  and 
no  one  could  have  had  more  lov- 
ing and  intelligent  assistance  than 
she  had  from  her  cousin,  Jennie 
Stanley,  who  now  for  many  years 
had  been  one  of  the  little  family. 
He  had  a  stubborn  streak  in  him, 
and  could  not  be  kept  from  over- 
work sometimes,  especially  when 
the  fruit  of  his  fine  orchard  was 
being  gathered,  and  he  was  making 
sure  that  the  best  went  to  his  son 
John.  Except  when  kept  in  doors 
by  special  ailments  or  by  stress  of 
weather  he  went  hither  and  thither, 
well  nigh  to  the  end,  often  making 
a  half-mile  or  more  in  good  time. 
A  few  months  before  his  death  he 
gave  me  his  quadrant.  When  he 
80 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

bought  it  in  1830,  it  had  served 
another  fisherman  some  fifty  years. 
On  his  eighty-sixth  birthday,  No- 
vember 18,  1895,  I  sent  him  the 
following  verses ;  and  he  did  not 
resent  their  praise  as  he  would 
have  done  a  few  years  earlier. 
Either  the  expression  of  affection 
had  become  more  sweet  to  him  or 
he  had  grown  more  perfectly  sin- 
cere and  knew  that  he  deserved  it 
all. 

TO    MY   FATHER'S   QUADRANT 

Poor  homesick    thing,    I    fear  I    do  you 
wrong, 
Far   from   the    smiting  of   the    eastern 
seas. 
Here  in  my  city  house  to  hang  you  up, 
My   pride   to   flatter  and  mine  eyes  to 
please. 
6  81 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

If  you  were  conscious,  you  would  ache 
and  moan 
Through    every    fibre    of  your   mystic 
frame, 
In  this  dull  place  to  find  yourself  bestowed. 
Nor  hold   me    clear  of  treachery    and 
blame. 

How    would    you    long   to    find    yourself 
once  more 
Where  the  great   waves  go  rolling  up 
and  down, 
And  the  loud  winds  that  spur  their  steam- 
ing flanks 
The    sailors    buflFet    and    their    voices 
drown  ! 

How    would    you  wonder  if  the    honest 
hand 
That  held  you  sunward  on  the  heaving 
main 
Had  quite  forgot  the  trick  it  knew  of  old. 
And  never  so  would  manage  you  again  ! 
82 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

Yea,  verily,  it  was  an  honest  hand, 

Warm  with  the  beating   of  an  honest 
heart ; 
Never    from    stouter    did    good     courage 
come, 
Never    from    truer    the    good     impulse 
start. 

You  were  his  guide  on  many  a  dangerous 
sea. 
Through   storm  and  darkness  led   him 
safely  home ; 
As  you  to  him,  so  he  shall  be  to  me. 
Whatever  seas  I  sail  or  lands  I  roam. 

So  onward  sped,  I  cannot  steer  amiss. 
Whatever   darkness  gathers   round   my 
way  : 
Let  night  come  down,  —  I  set  the  faithful 
watch. 
And  wait  it  out  until  another  day. 

It  was  my  great  good  fortune  to  be 
at  the  old  home  a  few  days  in  March, 
83 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

1896,  before  his  last  sickness  began. 
Friday,  the  thirteenth,  was  his  last 
day  downstairs.  But  he  was  up 
again,  and  making  his  waning  strength 
self-serviceable  the  Sunday  following. 
The  end  came  on  Saturday,  the 
twenty-first,  at  1.43  a.m.  He  faced 
it  with  clear-eyed  intelligence,  and 
we  said  to  one  another  how  good  it 
was  that  we  had  loved  each  other 
so  much  and  had  had  such  a  good 
time  together.  His  body  lies  beside 
my  mother's  in  the  Waterside  bury- 
ing-ground.  The  sea  is  not  far  off; 
but  it  is  the  quiet  side  of  Salem 
Harbor,  and  not,  as  I  would  like,  the 
Atlantic's  unimpeded  rush  and  roar. 
Yet  the  great  tides  forever  come  and 
go  and  make  a  pleasant  music  on  the 
shore.  The  stone  that  marks  his 
84 


CAP'N     CHADWICK 

grave  tells  that  he  "went  down  to 
the  sea  in  ships  and  did  business  on 
great  waters."  It  further  tells  that, 
"  In  the  good  schooner  '  Hero,'  he 
weathered  the  September  Gale  of 
1846." 

He  was  a  good  man.  It  was  in- 
conceivable that  he  could  do  any  de- 
liberate wrong,  or  vary  by  a  hair's 
breadth  from  the  line  of  perfect 
honesty  and  truth.  He  bothered  the 
Boston  merchants  a  good  deal  by  his 
anxiety  to  pay  his  bills  at  once.  His 
most  serious  fault  that  I  remember 
was  some  drawback  after  he  had 
granted  to  our  urgency  a  favor  which 
dulled  the  sweetness  of  its  taste ;  or 
he  would  shut  the  door  upon  his  last 
remark,  leaving  us  uncertain  as  to 
that,  and  the  debate  hanging  in  mid- 
85 


CAP'N    CHADWICK 

air.  Such  things  were  slight  deduc- 
tions from  a  life  of  constant  probity 
and  a  temper  of  unvarying  kindliness. 
No  man  allowed  himself  more  freely 
the  "  delights  of  admiration  "  in  his 
relations  with  his  friends.  His  faith 
in  the  Eternal  Goodness  was  as  sim- 
ple and  entire  as  a  child's  faith  in  its 
mother  when  it  is  lying  snug  and 
warm  upon  her  breast. 

Who  will  has  heard  my  father's 
story  told.  It  is  a  very  simple  one  ; 
so  simple,  possibly,  that  it  was  not 
worth  the  telling.  I  have  written 
mainly  for  the  joy  of  my  own  heart. 
So  doing  I  have  rescued  from  a  busy 
time  some  days  of  sweet  companion- 
ship with  one  whose  love  enriched 
my  life  unspeakably,  and  whose  char- 
acter was  to  me  a  quite  invaluable 
86 


CAP'N     CHADWICK 

assurance  of  an  innumerable  multi- 
tude of  men  and  women  of  his  sim- 
ple, steadfast  kind,  whose  quiet  service 
is  the  saving  salt  of  all  communities 
and  states.  It  must  be  well  with 
him  wherever  he  is  sailing  now,  be- 
low the  line  of  our  horizon,  upon  the 
open  sea,  or  to  what  port  soever  he 
has  come. 


87 


(l3 


THE  LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

Santa  Barbara 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW. 


SOUTMFRN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  f  AaUTY 


A    001  082  887     9 


